Paul Kanton asks…
When you are writing a script or story, how do you come up with proper names? Obviously common names like John Smith or Mary Jones can't be used all the time — or even often. Do you randomly look through a phone book, or use a name from your past, or what?
I've used names from my past, often combining the first name of one acquaintance with the last name of another…but that's usually when I need a name of no consequence. The trick there is to find one that's not too generic like Mary Jones and not too distracting in its oddness like Lucretia Frelinghoyzen.
Years ago, I had a little 39-cent book I found in a supermarket checkout line. It was on the rack of "impulse buy" items they place there hoping you'll grab one a whim and then you'll have paid for it by the time you come to your senses and ask, "Do I really need this?" This book was one of baby names and it gave me a lot of first names for characters. Once I'd settled on a first name, it wasn't hard to think of a last name that sounded natural following it.
I have no idea how or when I lost that book but I never got around to replacing it. I suppose now on the Internet, it would be easy to find web pages full of names but I never seem to need it.
With important characters, you look for a name that tells us something about the person. You ask what quality you'd like to convey in the name. Is the person rich? Angry? Continental? A stuffy character can have a stuffy name. A super-friendly character might have a first name that sounds more like a nickname. So I pick out a trait or quality of the character and I work from there.
The reality level of the project dictates some rules. If what I'm writing is broad comedy then I can get away with having a con-man character named Al Swindler or a rich guy named Jonathan Gelt. In a more realistic situation, that kind of stuff seems silly…though I did once have a driving instructor named Mr. Break and there was once a football quarterback named Tommy Prothro.
And though I wrote on this topic to avoid typing his name once again, I have to note this: Imagine if you wanted to name a character and we knew this about him…
- He's very rich.
- He uses his name as a brand name so it has to be unique but also short and punching.
- He's obsessed with winning.
Well, how about Something Trump? There are a lot of people out there whose real names sound like Charles Dickens came up with them.
